Since the SE's see any new subdomain as a whole new website, link popularity would have to be concentrated NOT on the main website, but on the subdomains too, if you REALLy want to have a rank like i had with this website :

This website niche is VERY competitive, and altough, let's say, 80.000 results appear in Google for a search it's extremly hard to rank high.

So .. My 2 cents. On a heavily promoted website, new added content (page, news bit, forum post, anything) already assumes the earned weight of the main domain, and immediatly ranks VERY HIGH, after it has been indexed.

With a subdomain, you would have to reach the same ammount of weight, for each subdomain, for that to happen. And it rarely happens that way.

The added importance, made to the keyword in the domain, versus the keyword in the URL, is not EVEN CLOSE as important as to the weight that's been passed to any new content.

Another example, would be a website with a forum.domain, and a domain.com/forum.

I strongly suggest to use the /forum/ solution. Anyone can see the benefits in the above statements.

I want real arguments and constructive talks on this issue, because it's so important, and maybe members can learn something.

I want to clearly mention that in all my experience, i never achieved a more positive (per total) effect, by using the subdomain (and i used it several times), versus the folder.

I always thought that the amount of direct trust transfered to a subdomain should have to deal with weather or not the root linked to it, and in what ways.

This here is just bad algorithms at their worst.

The trust transfer happened without the root domain linking to the rogue subdomains.

Subdomains are golden, in my opinion. They seem to bypass all the filters, and get all the weight of a seperate domain, while retaining all the weight of the root domain. It's actually a bit unfair to the competition, IMO.

A few other advantages to subdomains:

1. Link weight

Internal links do not carry as much weight as they used to. For example, a link from www.v7n.com to www.v7n.com/scripts/ would be considered internal, and that link would not carry a ton of weight of do much for you in the SERPs.

However, Google does not seem to treat links to and from subdomains as "internal" links. They treat them as seperate domains. So a link from www.v7n.com to http://blog.v7n.com is almost fully weighted, as an offsite link would be.

2. Root Carries Weight

Historically speaking, search engines have thought that the closer to root a webpage is, the more important it is. This was especially true with Google two or three years ago.

To illustrate, remember when all pages of a website had "ghost pagerank" (aka "default PageRank")?

Back in those days, if www.v7n.com had PR8, www.v7n.com/folder/ would have default PR of PR7 as a brand new URL.

I always thought that the amount of direct trust transfered to a subdomain should have to deal with weather or not the root linked to it, and in what ways.

Pure speculation.

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Subdomains are golden, in my opinion. They seem to bypass all the filters, and get all the weight of a seperate domain, while retaining all the weight of the root domain. It's actually a bit unfair to the competition, IMO.

Bypass filters ? What filters ? Retaining all the weight of the root domain ? In all my carrier i didn't noticed that, and i promoted/built over 500 websites. This is really important, because NONE of my tests prove that. I'm not a starter in this too, so i know what i am talking about.

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Internal links do not carry as much weight as they used to. For example, a link from www.v7n.com to www.v7n.com/scripts/ would be considered internal, and that link would not carry a ton of weight of do much for you in the SERPs.

I agree, that an internal link does not pass so much weight as an external one, of the same exact parameters (credibility/trust and pagerank).

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However, Google does not seem to treat links to and from subdomains as "internal" links. They treat them as seperate domains. So a link from www.v7n.com to http://blog.v7n.com is almost fully weighted, as an offsite link would be.

They sure aren't. They are external just as any other external link.

BUT, please bare with me on this one : PR passed from an internal page, to another internal page, is WAY larger/bigger than PR passed from an external page to an internal page.

An internal PR5 page with 30 outbound links, and linking to 20 other internal pages, will pass a PR4 or PR3 to all of those internal pages, while the external link will pass none or 1 or something like that.

PR passed from an internal page, to another internal page, is WAY larger/bigger than PR passed from an external page to an internal page.

Whoa, cowboy. Where do you het this?

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An internal PR5 page with 30 outbound links, and linking to 20 other internal pages, will pass a PR4 or PR3 to all of those internal pages, while the external link will pass none or 1 or something like that.

The amount of PR passed has to do with a lot of different things. How many links are on the page, how high on the page the link is, etc, but the issue here isn't even PageRank.

I'm talking about link juice, or link weight. Internal links don't carry anywhere near the same weight that links from external pages carry.

That happened back in 2003, along with the devaluing of same IP, different-domain links.

http://www.webmaster-forum.net/showthread.php?t=3866

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Wrong. The fact that they have www in the URL means jack. They all have millions of links pointing to them, which contain the www anchor (probably amongst others, like "the start of www" or stuff).

Expertu, two things:

1. Anything in the URL is treated as anchor text, even if no links use that as anchor text.

Say I have the URL "v7n.com/hotcakes.php". Now, say this URL only has one link, and the anchor text of that link is "Chinese Fortune Cookies", and the word "hotcakes" appears nowhere on the page and nowhere in the source code.

That URL will still rank for "hotcakes". Google will say:

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These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: hotcakes

The reason is, Google weights keywords in the URL, and treats them as anchor text. They do this even if the keywords in the URL have never been used in anchor text of links pointing to the page.

2. Yes, they do have millions of links pointing to them with the URL as the anchor text.

http://directory.v7n.com <- Like this.

Now would you rather have your highest prominence spot used for "www", or a relevant keyword?

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But really, 2 listings or 4 linstings are the same to me. People will still visit them no matter.

That's like saying a 10 foot tall billboard is the same as a 30 foot tall billboard.

A quick question relevant to the discussion here. Say I have 2 domains, site1.com and site2.com. If I create 2 links pointing to www.site2.com, one on the home page of www.site1.com, and another on the home page of subdomain1.site1.com, do search engines see one external link or 2 pointing to www.site2.com?

If I create 2 links pointing to www.site2.com, one on the home page of www.site1.com, and another on the home page of subdomain1.site1.com, do search engines see one external link or 2 pointing to www.site2.com?

Absolutely 2 external links.

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Originally Posted by Aviva

This is slightly off topic but: how do you set up a subdomain? As in a step by step guide for dummies.

I wasn't sucking up (much) - yours was equally as great. So I'm sucking up to you now LOL

Can we have a conclusion from someone before I start setting up my new site, which is better folders or subdomains?

I also have a question: You (one of you anyway) stated that subdomains are treated as external to the domain name. Therefore if a subdomain pointed to a different server would that increase the weight of the link even more?